


Fight For The Future

by SteamyGinger



Category: N/A - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Friendship, Immortality, Loss, Love Triangle, Magic, Modern Era, Multi, Nature, Other, Steampunk, Time Travel, Titans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteamyGinger/pseuds/SteamyGinger
Summary: Steam wants little more in life than to leave the past where it belongs- in the past. But out of the blue, she’s pulled from her casual alcoholic vigilante tendencies into a plot even bigger than she could’ve imagined, involving someone she wishes would just remain a painful memory. She must put her intellect, time traveling abilities, and her morals to the test in order to ultimately prevent the stopping of all time itself. Steam has no choice but to join forces with three drastically different characters with strangely interconnected destinies, including a bizarrely familiar teenager, a dryad of nature who recognizes Steam, and a graffiti artist with a heavenly secret. Will Steam be able to face the demons of her past, or will she crack under the weight of her own mistakes?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Fight For The Future

_**Chapter 1** _

Steam woke up in a dumpster.   
  


This was, sadly, not all that unusual. While she wasn’t exactly accustomed to waking up in dumpsters, alcohol had become one of her unhealthy coping mechanisms and often led to her ending up in very strange places. Never was she touched, though.

Steam would snap someone’s neck over her knee before they could do that.

  
And so she remained still in the dumpster, listening to the sounds around her. It was uncomfortably quiet. She had never been one to dwell long in silence. Steam despised the quiet; it reminded her that she was alone with the thoughts in her head, which made no real sound aside from the cacophony of undesired comments. Though they were organized in perfect little shelves inside her head, that didn’t stop them from lurking in the back of her mind and shouting in her skull when no other words were spoken to drown them out. 

Steam preferred it when she couldn’t hear her own thoughts.

“Shut up.” She spoke beneath her breath. She liked the sound of her own voice; it was familiar, and one of the few things she still had of her past. Her voice had remained strong despite the hardships she had faced, the horrors she had witnessed, the people she had lost, and she clung to it like a child to its mother. She held her voice and her wits about her as if they were medals to brandish, which, in her humble opinion, they were indeed things to be proud of. Unrivaled by most in charisma and intellect, Steam displayed both without restraint. They were her most prized possessions, after all. Why would she not demonstrate them at any given opportunity?

“Shut up.”

She said it again, louder this time. Ironic that the charlatan could only seem to repeat that simple phrase, despite her extensive vocabulary. A simple command to cure the quiet that flooded her senses as she sat upright, her unnaturally aquamarine eyes darting around quickly. She was relieved to find that she was still unharmed. Her hair cascaded down her shoulders in blood red waves, and it stopped a little before halfway down her back. Not super long, but certainly long enough; she figured she’d need a haircut soon. Steam had a crick in her neck which refused to go away despite popping it, and she sighed. 

Tired and disoriented, she clambered out of the dumpster.

With the grace of a swan with Parkinson’s disease, she fell onto the concrete with a sad squish. Steam mumbled a string of profane words towards the ground as she forced herself to do ten pushups before allowing herself to stand. She teetered momentarily on her feet as spots danced before her eyes, and she rubbed them with her gloved palms. She regretted that instantly, as rubbing dirty rubber into one’s own eyes is apparently not all that helpful. She cursed in several languages, frowning. Her gloves were black and fingerless, and they went halfway up her forearms. She held up her left arm and checked the time on her watch, then cursed again. “Figures,” Steam said, annoyance rising in her voice. “I always seem to be late...” She brushed some of the grime off her navy denim shorts and made sure her black knee high boots hadn’t been scuffed at all. Her t-shirt was teal with no design on it, although because of her highly intelligent idea to sleep in a dumpster, there were a few stains from God knows what. She was tall and more muscular than one would expect, and she had a strange sort of beauty to her. If she were in cleaner clothes and maybe had a nice long shower, she would look a bit more decent. The plethora of scars that marked her body like constellations did not assist in making her seem more orderly, although from a distance, due to the sheer abundance of them along her flesh, she simply looked tanned as opposed to a veteran of countless horrors. Except for the scar along the bridge of her nose- that one stood out against the rest of her skin, and had a story to rival that of any of her other scars.

“Damn it all- it’s 2008! This will hardly do.”

Steam scowled, and a couple walking on the sidewalk sped up as they passed her. “You’d think I was mad, based on how they viewed me. Jesus.” She rubbed her temples for a moment, then began walking along the sidewalk. Her eyes were wide as she tried to keep herself focused, but her hand absentmindedly made its way up to her neck, reminding her of the cold metal beneath her shirt that dug into her collarbone. She tugged on the necklace once, then let it go, refusing to open the locket that dangled from it. She could already feel the memories that came with it threatening to spill over, and she was not in the mood to deal with that.

Steam decided she needed a drink.

Luckily, she knew a place.  
Unluckily, she did have standards for herself, and she knew she should lay off the drinking.

So instead, Steam simply continued walking down the street, her eyes now focused on her watch. You see, it wasn’t a normal watch. It was significantly bulkier than average, more like a bracer with a clock on it, but that wasn’t even half of what made it so special. On the watch’s face, not only was the time of day displayed, but the year and seconds were as well. It also had four different colored lights on the side of it, and a touchscreen. The lights never really changed- the green one was always on. The touchscreen allowed her to type in exact locations, times, and years. But why would anyone need that?

Because it could take Steam wherever she wished, to whatever time she wanted.

Steam had received it from an unknown sender when she was younger, and it responded only to her. If anyone else tried to mess with it, it simply wouldn’t leave without Steam. This was her true most prized possession, and it is what really inspired her to do good, no matter where she traveled in time. Sometimes, her watch would even alert her to small events that she could - or would - prevent. For example, it began beeping as she passed a young man in a business suit, talking on his flip phone. Steam paused for a moment, then took notice of the fact that he had begun jaywalking and crossing the street, and she quickly figured out what was about to happen. The oncoming truck that seemed to have no intent of stopping told her all she needed to know. She shouted for the man to move, but he was too distracted to notice, and so, seeing as her time was running out, she went with her gut instincts and ran after him. They made eye contact for a split second as she threw herself forward in an attempt to get them both out of the way of danger. She succeeded in shoving him out of the way, but herself…

Steam was hit by the truck.


End file.
